New area lighting makes the ports on the back of the Emperium display easier to see.

HP

HP saved a lot of updates to its Omen gaming family for CES 2019. Namely, the Omen Obelisk desktop—the pre-built machine that’s designed to tempt those who prefer to build their own gaming PCs—will be much more powerful in 2019 thanks to new processors, graphics, and memory support.

HP debuted the Obelisk at the end of last summer as a fully customizable gaming tower. Its starting price of less than $ 1,000 appealed to those who didn’t necessarily want to spend a ton on a gaming PC. However, the Obelisk could quickly cost more than $ 2,000 with various upgrades and enhancements.

Now, the updated Obelisk will be more powerful and more expensive than ever before—if you spec it out to the max. It will support up to 9th-gen Core i9 Intel processors, AMD processors, and up to Nvidia RTX 2080Ti graphics. The original tower could support 32GB of Hyper X DDR4 RAM, and HP upped that to 64GB of Hyper X DDR4 RAM in this new model.

While the new Obelisk tower looks mostly the same as the original, it now has a second M.2 SSD slot to support more storage. It also has liquid cooling technology inside to improve thermal management.

Accompanying the updated Obelisk desktop is a new-ish Omen X Emperium 65 display with integrated soundbar. Last year at CES, HP showed off this massive, 65-inch gaming display complete with the smallest bezels you could realistically expect on a display of its size. It’s impressive to behold in person, and now HP improved its sound quality by adding a soundbar into the mix. The unassuming black bar with three stereo amps is designed to fit underneath the display, between the triangular feet on its corners. The entire footprint of the Emperium 65 isn’t expanded by its addition.

The Emperium 65 now supports Nvidia G-Sync, with a refresh rate of 144Hz. HP also added proximity lighting to the back of the display near its ports. The display is designed to be viewed in the dark, but that makes its rear ports hard to find. The new proximity sensor detects motion and turns on the new light bar automatically when you approach, illuminating the ports so you can easily connect what you need even in the dark.

HP also updated its Omen 15 laptop to have a 240Hz display option. That new laptop won’t be available until July 2019, though.

The HP Omen X Emperium 65 with integrated soundbar will be available in February starting at $ 4,999, and the updated Obelisk desktop will be available in March starting at $ 2,249.

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